What We Do

As the umbrella public safety agency for the City of New Orleans, NOHSEP works to increase our resilience to natural and human-made disasters. The Planning Section is responsible for maintaining the City's "All-Hazards Resiliency Framework", which are the plans, processes and procedures by which the City prepares, responds and recovers from crises.

We also pursue this goal through several federally-supported initiatives, such as those listed below:

Urban Area Security Initiatives (UASI)

Created by the 9/11 Act, the UASI Program provides funding to cities to help build capacity against the threat of terrorism. At least 25% of these funds must be used for law enforcement terrorism prevention activities. New Orleans, along with the other three regional a parishes, is currently a UASI funding recipient.

Point of Contact: UASI

Cities Readines Initiative (CRI)

The CRI is a federally funded program in partnership with the Center for Disease Control (CDC) designed to help large cities be prepared. Working with the Louisiana Office of Public Health, we have plans to respond to a large-scale bioterrorist event. We can give antibiotics to our entire City population, including tourists and homeless, within 48 hours.

We conduct an annual operational readiness review (ORR) with the CDC and Louisiana public health to assess plans and measure capacity. The TAR scores are on a scale from zero to 100. For the last 3 years, New Orleans has received a score higher than 90 and in 2011 we received one of the only perfect scores ever achieved in the 9 years of the grant assessment.

Point of Contact: NOHSEP Planning Section

Chemical Defense Demonstration Project (CDDP)

The City of New Orleans was selected as one of four jurisdictions in the U.S. to host a U.S. DHS Office of Health Affairs (OHA) funded project to develop a comprehensive and robust concept of operatinos (CONOPS) which addresses the intricacies of chemical incident response. Particularly, the New Orleans CDDP focuses on the maritime and rail vulnerabilities and will include a functional exercise which to validate the developed framework.

Point of Contact: NOHSEP Planning Section

How We Work

The disaster life cycle was developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and describes the process through which we work.

Response

Actions taken to save lives and prevent further damage once a disaster or emergency incident has occurred.

Risk Reduction

Goal is to reduce the risk to life and property (existing structures and construction).

Achieved through regulations, local ordinances, land use and building practices, and mitigation projects.

Prevention

Measures taken to detect, contain, and avoid incidents which could result in a disaster

Preparedness

Plans, procedures, or protocols that save lives and lessen damage when an emergency occurs.

Planning, training, and drills so emergency managers can provide the best response possible.

Disasters can be caused by tropical storms, gale force winds, floods, releases of deadly chemicals, fire, tornados, earthquakes and other natural and man-made hazards such as bioterrorism (release of viruses, bacteria etc. for harm) and pandemic influenza (flu that affects many people).

When disaster strikes, the best protection is to know what to do and to have a personal plan.